Democracy and Political Knowledge in Ancient Athens

DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE IN ANCIENT ATHENS Ilya Somin, George Mason University School of Law Ethics, Vol. 119, No. 3, pp. 585-590, April 2009 George Mason University Law and Economics Research Paper Series 09-31 This paper can be downloaded without charge from the Social Science Research Network at http://ssrn.com/abstract_id=1428612 Book Reviews 585 as supported by that reason—a conclusion in the case of theoretical reasoning, an action or decision in the practical case. So reasons seem to be things that form the subject of the judgments that are the starting point of reasoning, not its product. That is too quick, though. Millgram is evidently classifying reasoning to conclusions about our reasons for action as practical, not theoretical, reasoning. Contesting that claim would be a merely verbal disagreement, so let us grant it. The more significant objection is this. It still seems incorrect to think that reasons themselves are the product of such reasoning. Its product is judgments about reasons, and these can be wrong, even when we have reasoned well. There may be a problem with the information available to me, rather than with my reasoning about it. So it still seems wrong to hold that what there really is reason for me to do could be fixed by the reasoning I do about that question. This makes me doubt that it is by reference to theories of practical reasoning (where this is understood in either of the ways just described) that we will generate a satisfactory theory of morality. However, I think that is a reason for Millgram to redescribe the aims of his project, not to abandon it. Correct reasoning about practical reasons may not fix the content of morality itself, but it will contain the most important part of the epistemology of morality. A second distinction may help to explain that claim. Talk of “justification” in connection with morality can mean different things. One of the things it can be used to talk about is what makes something have the moral status it has; another is what warrants me in judging that it has a certain moral status. Call the first of these “determinative justification” and the second “epistemic justification.” These are different since I can be warranted in making mistaken moral judgments, just as I can be with judgments of other kinds. This distinction helps, I think, to describe what Millgram should and shouldn’t be claiming to do. A moral theory tries to give a general description of the patterns of determinative justification that support attributions of moral status. The forms of practical reasoning advocated by Millgram do not themselves constrain the content of the correct moral theory. However, they do offer to tell us when our judgments about moral status are well reasoned. They address the epistemic justification of moral judgments, not the determinative justification of the contents of those judgments. That is still an important task. So even if these critical remarks are correct, the task Millgram is taking on still deserves close attention. From his sustained application to that task, there is a wealth of things to learn. Garrett Cullity University of Adelaide Ober, Josiah. Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. Pp. 342. $29.95 (cloth). In this excellent recent book, Josiah Ober argues that ancient Athenian democracy surmounted the dangers of political ignorance and made effective use of dispersed citizen knowledge to forge good public policy. Ober skillfully dem- 586 Ethics April 2009 onstrates that Athenian democracy was more successful than the oligarchic and tyrannical governments of rival Greek city-states. He also explains how Athenian institutions worked to reduce the dangers of political ignorance. On the other hand, he is less successful in showing that the relatively impressive performance of Athenian democracy should lead us to be optimistic about the competence of today’s democratic state (267–68). THE CHALLENGE OF POLITICAL IGNORANCE Modern democracy is weakened by widespread political ignorance. Decades of survey data show that most citizens have little or no knowledge of politics and public policy (see, e.g., Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996]; Scott Althaus, Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics [New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 2003]). A 2003 survey showed that 70 percent of Amer- icans were unaware of the recent enactment of the Bush administration’s massive prescription drug plan, the largest new government program in some forty years (Ilya Somin, “When Ignorance Isn’t Bliss: How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 525, 2004, 6). The evidence also suggests that voters make poor use of the information they do know, overvaluing evidence that seems to confirm their preexisting views and irrationally ignoring that which goes against them (e.g., Ilya Somin, “Knowledge about Ignorance: New Directions in the Study of Political Information,” Critical Review 18 [2006]: 255–78, esp. 260–64). Voter ignorance and irrationality weaken democratic con- trol of government and could also lead to harmful, irrational policy decisions (e.g., Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Make Bad Decisions [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007]). Political ignorance and irrationality are actually rational behavior. An in- dividual voter has virtually no chance of influencing the outcome of the election—on average about 1 in 60 million in the case of a modern U.S. presidential election (Andrew Gelman, Nate Silver, and Aaron Edlin, “What Is the Probability Your Vote Will Make a Difference?” unpublished paper, October 27, 2008, 1). As a result, the incentive to accumulate political knowledge is vanishingly small, so long as the only reason for doing so is to cast a “better” vote. Paradoxically, illogical use of the information voters do possess also turns out to be rational. Rationally ignorant voters may limit not only the amount of information they acquire but also “how rationally they process the information they do have” (Bryan Caplan, “Rational Irrationality,” Kyklos 54 [2001]: 3–22, 5). Since there is little incentive to acquire knowledge for the purpose of casting a more informed vote, most of those who do pay attention to politics will do so for other reasons, many of which conflict with the requirements of rational evaluation of evidence. Citizens with a strong interest in politics often function like “political fans” cheering on their side rather than as rational assessors of information (Somin, “Knowledge about Ignorance,” 260–61). They evaluate data in a highly biased manner that tends to confirm rather than objectively test their preexisting views. The “fans’” mode of processing information is perfectly rational for purposes of psychic gratification even though it disserves the objective of improving the Book Reviews 587 quality of their votes. The latter goal, however, is one that they have very little incentive to pursue. ASSESSING THE ATHENIAN RECORD Concern over the dangers of political ignorance dates all the way back to the origins of democracy in ancient Greece. Ancient critics of Athenian democracy, such as Plato and Thucydides, claimed that it functioned poorly because the people were ignorant of public affairs and argued that ignorance led to disastrous policy decisions (Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Athens on Trial: The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994], 48–92). These ancient criticisms of democracy influenced later political theorists, including many of the American Founding Fathers (ibid.). Ober does an excellent job of showing that Athenian democracy functioned far better than the ancient critics believed. He shows that during the 185-year period when Athens was a democracy, it consistently outperformed all other Greek city-states in economic growth, cultural achievement, and other criteria (39–69). Particularly impressive is the magnitude of Athens’s advantage over even the most successful competitors, such as Sparta and Syracuse. For example, Athens’s aggregate score on “material flourishing” (a combination of various economic performance and influence measures) is nearly 50 percent higher than that of any other polis in Ober’s 164-state database. Ober also demonstrates that Athenian success was closely correlated with the rise and fall of democracy, since Athenian government performed best when it was most democratic and relatively poorly before the rise of democracy and after its fall (70–75). These results are consistent with modern social science research showing that democracies generally outperform authoritarian states on a variety of metrics (Morton Halperin, The Democracy Advantage: How Democracy Promotes Prosperity and Peace [New York: Routledge, 2004]). In the latter half of the book, Ober shows how Athenian political institutions harnessed dispersed knowledge, while reducing the dangers posed by political ignorance. In chapter 4, he shows how the organization of Athens into demes and participatory institutions such as the Council of 500 and the Popular As- sembly enabled Athens to aggregate the dispersed information held by citizens with different backgrounds and areas of expertise. Later chapters show how the Athenians created incentives for citizens to engage in mutually beneficial collective action (chap. 5) and how codification of Athenian law reduced information costs and created a credible commitment to respect the rights and prop- erty of the people (chap. 6). As Ober points out, Athens’s ability to minimize the problem of political ignorance is all the more impressive in light of the fact that the polis was a participatory, rather than a representative, democracy. Key policy decisions were made by the Popular Assembly in which all citizens (native- born free adult males) could vote (161–62). Many key public offices were held by ordinary citizens chosen by lot (156–57).

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